Thresher Group

COMPANY

Thresher Group is the UK’s leading independent specialist drinks retailer and 13th largest private retailer, serving over 150 million customers annually from its 2,000 shops across the country.

CHALLENGE

Re-engineer IT architecture to reduce operations costs and improve business agility in areas such as Supply Chain Management and Point of Sale:

• Overcome drawbacks of IT architecture from a history of mergers
• Reduce operations and maintenance costs for outsourced mainframe system
• Replace and improve upon mainframe system’s integration capabilities
• Reduce future integration costs for development projects required by business strategy

WHY ABEAM?

Record of achievement for programme management.

SOLUTION

Executive oversight of entire programme for managing outsourcing partners, trading partners, project resources and risk mitigation plan, including:

• Management and implementation of a message hub to replace the mainframe integration function (included strategy to exploit the new technology for future benefit)
• Integration support for SAP replacement of mainframe finance ledgers
• Investigation of additional benefits such as migrating EDI messages from VAN charges
• Development of internal Centre of Excellence for support processes and Service Level Agreements

REAL BENEFITS

Thresher Group achieved payback on their project investment nine months ahead of schedule. The project was recognized with a European Retail Solutions Award for Best Back Office Integration.